The migration to our new server went almost without any issues (so far ).

We had an issue with mail sending for around 18 hours, all registration emails should have been resent.If not, simply contact us or request the registration email here: https://www.ugx-mods.com/forum/activate/

New Server - Okay?! - So what exactly does that mean now?

We have now twice as much bandwidth which means a total of 500 Mbps.Our server is also faster (better CPU) but thats not relevant to you.

Before our new server, our development tools (Jira, Confluence, ...) and our production websites (UGX-Mods Forum, ...) where hosted on the same server.Now the forum and upcoming services will run on their own server, this ensures less performance impact when we do some busy dev stuff

We can ensure more redundant backups. We have in total three server now, so each (critical) backup is synced to two servers now.

The new server offered us a new fresh start.

I'm a hobbyist server administrator.That means I didn't received any porfessional schooling or anything like that.It's all based on carefull internet resarch, learning by doing and my technical interest in these things.

For UGX I do this now for over 5 years and a fresh start offered me to revisit best practice.That helped us to migrate easily to a new database engine, a newer PHP version and also improved web server configuration.

The result is a faster and more secure system than before.

Speaking of security

SSL/TLS

We recently moved our site to enforced full TLS encryption.With the server move, we also send now an so called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Header.We configured it that way, that your browser will remember the website as HTTPS only and will only make HTTPS connections now.If our certificate is wrong or anything like that, the browser will block the access to the site / request.(it's a really easy explenation - but the message is here that we enhanced the security )

We are applying to the preload list now, so browser vendors (like Chrome and Firefox) will hardcode our domain in their list.

Meltdown & Spectre

You might have heard about Meltdown and Spectre recently, especially with Intel CPU.All our servers use Intel Xenons (Server CPUs) and yes - they are all effected by this.

The good news first: Our systems are patched against Meltdown (case 1).

But apparently we are not secured against Spectre (case 2 & case 3) yet.We are awaiting patches by the devs and as soon as they are out we will update our systems.

It might impact performance but based on our current state it won't be noticable (at least for you ).

Fruther improvements this year

We will monitor and further improve / tweak the server. This is an ongoing (time consuming) process.On my todo list is more monitorng, better security audits,

Whats next?

The server migration is over and I can slowly go back to web development.A new major patch is almost ready for the Closed Beta and we hope that the Open Beta can happen soon.Maybe February?

Thank you sooo much

I would like to thank foremost our donators and supporters, every individual who contributes to this website and / or community.Thanks to you, I can do this fun, great and amaizing hobby and while I had some sleepless and stressfull nights (especially the past few days) it's still filling me with joy and a good feeling that we serve for over 6 years now this amaizing forum for amaizing people (like you!).

Also please take part on our survey if you haven't yet.It's a great motivation boost (I read every single one of them) and insight into what you guys think and want from UGX-Mods.